dr Claudia Eggart

Dissertation/Book Manuscript

Eggart, C. Lived Geopolitics. Re-Scaling Market Infrastructures in Odesa and Bishkek from Soviet Collapse to Imperial Backlash [in preparation].

Abstract

This book tells the story of two of the world’s largest container markets, the Dordoi Bazaar in Bishkek and the 7th Kilometer Market in Odesa, both of which were born from the collapse of the Soviet Union. As privatization and economic crisis pushed millions into trade, these markets turned into vital nodes linking goods from China, Turkey, and beyond with consumers across Eurasia. While many such markets vanished, Dordoi and the 7th Km endured, evolving into sprawling infrastructures of global commerce. Drawing on 18 months of multi-sited ethnographic research conducted between 2018 and 2026, the book follows traders as they navigate decades of instability, from the turbulent 1990s to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It offers a rare longitudinal account of post-Soviet marketization, showing how economic life is continuously remade, through the everyday practice of krutit’sya - to spin, circulate, and make do. Krutit’sya is key to understand how market actors reroute goods, forge partnerships, and build sustainable logistical systems under conditions of crisis, war, and shifting border regulation. These empirical insights lead to the book’s main concept lived geopolitics. Lived geopolitics, in a nutshell, conceptualizes the macro-scale of power politics and the micro-scale of everyday life as mutually co-constitutive. It foregrounds traders as knowledgeable agents who actively shape the economic and political landscapes they inhabit. In doing so, the book offers a timely and portable concept to the emerging anthropology of geopolitics. Furthermore, it brings Eastern Europe and Central Asia studies into a rare dialogue, emphasizing patterns of connectivity and dis-connectivity in a (de-)globalizing world. Finally, focusing on Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, the book challenges state-centric and Russia-focused narratives, in area studies, highlighting instead the resourcefulness and agency of people at the margins of the global economy.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Eggart, C. Parvu, S. (accepted). “Transport Geopolitics at the Margins. Embedded Infrastructures in the Lower Danube Borderlands.” Environment and Planning C.

Eggart, C., (accepted). “From ‘Field of Wonders’ to ‘Container Graveyard.’ Crisis and Liminality at the 7Km Market in Odesa.” East European Politics and Societies.

Eggart, C., (2026). Lived Geopolitics. The Production of Unorthodox Scalar Connections through Trade. Anthropological Theory. https://doi.org/10.21428/4566d66c.4a351a1a

Eggart, C., (2026). “From Object of Trauma to Subject of History. Women Shuttle Traders in the Wild 1990s.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies. ahead-of-print, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2026.2712389

Eggart, C., 2024. “Waiting at Giurgiulesti Customs. Borders, Bureaucracy, and Geopolitics in between Ukraine, Moldova, and the EU.” Geopolitics. ahead-of-print, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2024.2351083

Eggart, C., 2024. “Made in Kyrgyzstan is Gold!” The Rise of the Informal Kyrgyzstani Apparel Industry. Third World Quarterly. (45), 13-14, p. 2373-2390
https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2023.2254242

Eggart, C., 2023. ‘They Called Us Spekulyanty’: Shame and Pride in the Biographies of Female Shuttle Traders in Post-Soviet Russia. Europe-Asia Studies. (75), 10, p.1677–1697. https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2023.2186320

Bartels, I. Burda, T., Eggart, C., Nowak, K., Wiederkehr, S., 2022. ‘Can You Hear Me?’ Five Reflections on Building Rapport Online During the Coronavirus (COVID-19), Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. 174
 

Edited Volumes

Eggart, C. (forthcoming October 2026) “Beyond Neoliberalism and Precarity: Entrepreneurial Subjectivities at the Dordoi Bazaar in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan,” in F. Galdini and E. Pesci (eds.) What’s in a Job? Rethinking Labour, Gender, and Precarity in Central Asia. Palgrave Macmillan UK (International Political Economy Series).

Special Issues

Berisha, R., & Eggart, C. (2026). Introduction: Locating the Geopolitical: Ethnographies of ‘Contact Zones.’ Anthropological Theory. https://doi.org/10.21428/4566d66c.d294abce

Eggart, C.; Karrar, H. (forthcoming in November 2026) “Markets as Infrastructures,” in Roadsides

Other Publications
 

2026 Short-read article: How Ukraine’s strikes on Russian warehouses became a problem in Kyrgyzstan, in The Conversation, https://doi.org/10.64628/AB.waghtk7nx 

Long-read article: Kyrgyzstan’s Dordoi Bazaar: a world made from shipping containers and a city within a city, in The Conversation, https://doi.org/10.64628/AB.k4uqphdet

2025 Blog post: Unpacking Emotions in Post-Soviet Russia: The Role of Shame and Pride in Socioeconomic Transformation, in Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia

2023 Spotlight: Gelebte Geopolitik: Getreidelogistik zwischen Krieg und Grenze, Center for East European and International Studies (ZOiS)

2022 Spotlight: Das Ende des Postsowjetischen/The End of the Post-Soviet, Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS)

Blog post: Grassroot-level Humanitarian Aid and the Paradoxes of Logistics, Regulation, and Geography in Times of War, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford

2020 Blog post: Mapping the post-Soviet Market in Crisis, In Boasblog: Fieldwork Meets Crisis